


Ancestors

by AshsHorrorShow



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, Anger, Angst, Childhood, Drabble, Gen, It Sucks to be Jonathan Crane, Mommy Issues, Photographs, Year One Backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 17:29:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13392744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshsHorrorShow/pseuds/AshsHorrorShow
Summary: Sometimes, Jonathan Crane would pause to look at the family photos Great Grandma Keeny had hanging along the walls to find one particular face.





	Ancestors

Sometimes, when he wasn’t laboriously working in the fields, doing his homework, at school, or sneakily trying to read books he had checked out at the library behind Great Grandmother Keeny’s back, Jonathan Crane would look at the wide amount of Keeny family photos hanging up on the walls lining the house. There were a lot of them. Some of them were so old, they predated the Civil War. 

Great Grandma Keeny was very prideful of all of these photos showing generations amongst generations of the Keeny family name. So proud in fact, that she didn’t even make him dust the photo frames, vehemently insisting he wouldn’t do a good job or mess them up somehow. Not that he was complaining. Besides cooking, dusting these relics was the only chore Great Grandma Keeny did.

Just by looking at the photos, he could tell when the Keeny family had been the rich and aristocratic family Great Grandma Keeny boasted it being, versus when they began losing their wealth. The clothes the people wore in the older photos were ornate and new. The women were adorned in fancy jewelry and the men had watches and other trinkets to accessorize their looks. However, as they neared the end of the family photos, he could see some repeats in dressware. After all, they couldn’t exactly afford to buy new suits and dresses for every family photo anymore like they used to, so some hand-me-downs had to do. Heck, even the suit he wore to church every Sunday had belonged to his great-great-uncle or something like that, according to Great Grandma Keeny. 

The manor back in the early pictures looked well-kept and he could see a flourishing crop behind it, full of vegetation. But now, in the new photos, the manor looked akin to a haunted house of some kind: depressing, dilapidated, and old. The crops had long since withered away, making the photos even more ugly. It was kind of a depressing turn of events in a way. 

He didn’t recognize most of the faces in the photos. Most of the Keeny family was dead and the ones who remained were not close at all. Occasionally, he saw his grandma every now and again, but that, was thankfully a rare occurrence. The rest though did not remain in much contact, having long since given up the idea of the manor and moving to make a new life somewhere else. 

If Great Grandma Keeny caught him staring at the photos, it would be one of the few times in her life where she wouldn’t snap at him for being a lazy ingrate or remind him he was a bastard child, or something equally as cruel. Instead, she would give histories about some of the photos. The one she seemed to like pointing out the most were the family photos that depicted her as a young girl. It was kind of strange to see that once, Great Grandma Keeny had once been a young and pretty woman. Jonathan had begun theorizing that she had been born from the ground as an old hag, but those pictures proved him wrong. The woman in the pictures didn’t look to be cruel, but looks could be deceiving. 

But really, Jonathan didn’t give a care too much about the family photos. The Keeny family had proven time and time again they were nothing but cruel and wicked people, and he was sure the relatives of old were no different. They were probably all like Young Great Grandma Keeny, pleasant looking at first, but two faced, mean, and bitter on the inside. 

The only picture amongst the group he cared about in the slightest was one. One which was hung in the middle of the wall, almost invisible in a way. It was another family photo, but in this one, his mother stood in it. 

He was surprised Great Grandma Keeny still had this photo hanging up. She had pillaged all the other photos of his mother, hellbent on showing no signs that his “whore mother” ever existed. However, this picture was still there. Maybe Great Grandma Keeny was so used to passing these photos and wiping them clean, she barely looked at them fully anymore unless Jonathan gave her a reason too. Maybe Great Grandma Keeny held a certain sentimentality to this photo, that even his mother couldn’t ruin. Maybe somewhere deep within that cold, dead, black heart of hers, even Great Grandma Keeny couldn’t bear the thought of wiping away every single piece of proof that Karen Keeny ever existed. Maybe Jonathan’s conception wasn’t enough to make her hate his mother as much as she claims it did. Who knew? Certainly not him. He had given up trying to figure out what Great Grandma Keeny was thinking a long time ago.

But even if Great Grandma Keeny didn’t hate his mother completely, he certainly did. It felt weird to feel that way. After all, he didn’t even know his mother. She had left right after he was born, leaving him in the care with Great Grandmother Keeny. According to both his grandmother and great grandmother, she was a horrible, wretched whore who showed no respect to anyone… but to give his mother a lick of credit, Great Grandmother Keeny and Grandma Keeny weren’t exactly the nicest people either. 

According to them, she ran away like the coward she was. Again, he didn’t blame her for running away. He wanted to run away himself. Every time he was forced to bake in the sun, laboriously working on fields that he knew would never grow, he considered running off and just taking his chances somewhere else. Didn’t matter where. It was not like Great Grandma Keeny’s haggard old body would be able to catch him and anywhere was better than there. Maybe she was just like him in that way, sick of the abuse, sick of the cruelty from her mother and grandmother. 

But why did she have to leave him behind? According to the books he read and the preaches he heard, there was nothing stronger than the bond between a mother and her child. So then why did she abandon him? Why did his father, who he also didn’t know abandon him? If she knew how monstrous Great Grandma Keeny was, why did she leave him behind to suffer the same fate she did? Even putting him up for adoption was better than this, surely? Surely letting him suffer from the cruel people of Arlen, Georgia was too much. 

She didn’t even bother to write him a letter explaining anything or kept any form of contact. He could imagine she wanted to forget that he even existed. 

So the only conclusion he could come up with was that she didn’t love him. That, like Great Grandma Keeny and Grandma Marion, and all of the kids at school, she had hated him upon first sight and didn’t care what happened to him so long as she didn’t have to deal with him. So she left behind to achieve her own happiness, and dooming him to a life of misery. She was just as horrible as everyone else in her rotten family name. 

He stared at his mother’s young, sad face in the photo with eyes of hate. Clenching his fists, he walked away, figuring he should just get his chores done early so he could finish his homework. There was no use getting angry when he couldn’t do anything about it. But one day, he was determined that he would find his mother, wherever she was, and he would make sure to tell her exactly how he felt about her.

**Author's Note:**

> Poor Jonathan. 
> 
> As always, critique is wanted and I hope you enjoyed! <3


End file.
